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From Ars Technica comes this update in the defamation case filed by climate researcher Michael Mann against political commentator Mark Steyn of National Review magazine, who rhetorically compared Mann to Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky and accused him of publishing intentionally misleading research results.
"The defendants tried to get it dismissed under the District of Columbia's Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) statute, which attempts to keep people from being silenced by frivolous lawsuits. The judge hearing the case denied the attempt and then promptly retired; Mann next amended his complaint, leading an appeals court to send the whole thing back to a new trial judge. Now the new judge has denied the SLAPP attempt yet again. In a decision released late last week (and hosted by defendant Mark Steyn), the judge recognizes that the comparison to a child molester is part of the "opinions and rhetorical hyperbole" that are protected speech when used against public figures like Mann. However, the accompanying accusations of fraud are not exempt:"

So "You're like a child molestor" is ok, but "You are a fraud" is not?

Weasel words and politicing, and slander in both cases in my books.

The legal system is seriously fucked up if it considers such minor differences to be grounds for letting someone off on making baseless accusations, "freedom of the press" or no. If you can't prove what you're making accusations about, one should be required to legally STFU and have some damned integrity in their writing, not be free to spew whatever bile and vitriol they like and whine "it's just an allegory."

Here's an allegory for the guy who wrote the insults and slams: "You're very much like the slime from between the toes of the Himalayan Sloth."

The legal system is seriously fucked up if it considers such minor differences

The legal system is pretty much there to consider exactly these minor differences, and it (should) strives to do so consistently and at the same as balancing both public opinion and the rights of the individual. Sounds impossible? Well, it is. You're welcome to suggest a better alternative.

I've had my view on the whole climate change/global warming thing for a while. First up, I accept that temperatures have risen on average in recent times. The numbers are holding up to scrutiny, although very recent numbers may be suggesting we've hit a plateau, depending who you believe.

Where there doesn't seem to be a strong consensus is whether it's entirely man-made (I'm awaiting the flames to start on that commment...). We know Earth's climate has gone through cycles (medieval warm period, little ic

If some journalist for Mother Jones got into legal trouble, I'm pretty sure they'd have his back. But the National Review just throws people aside when it's convenient. It would be one thing if what Steyn argued (that global warming is BS) wasn't conservative dogma, but it is. He pretty much just strongly worded their position.

For instance, George Bush's commander really did think of Bush the way a fake letter (put forth by CBS as real) said he did; presumably the faker was frustrated by his inability to get that fact in the news, so he resorted to fraud, no doubt thinking that the real truth made it morally OK. But he still committed fraud, and the news that the secretary who would have typed the letter if it were real, said it was the commander's opinion, even as she debunked the letter was quite lost in the scandal over the fraud.

So global warming could be real, and Mann still a fraud, or it could be all a huge mistake by thousands of scientists, and Mann NOT a fraud, simply in possession of data that was mistaken or didn't mean what he thought.

Steyn is no doubt happy about the trial, because it will give him grounds to subpoena great heaps of Mann's work, looking for the same thing that the climategate E-mail thieves looked for: any kind of out-of-context quote they can find that they cam drum up into a "scandal" - a fraudulent one, of course...

SLAPPstick Farce
by Mark Steyn
January 25, 2014
http://www.steynonline.com/601... [steynonline.com]
"Meanwhile, in the same period [the two-year anti-SLAPP hearing], Dr. Mann has been brandishing his hockey stick out on the campaign trail against Republican candidates. In Virginia, he appeared in the Democrats' attack ads against Ken Cuccinelli, and helped get Clinton's bagman Terry McAuliffe elected governor. When his candidate Mark Herring also prevailed over the GOP in the attorney general's race, Mann crowed and published tweets from his acolytes congratulating him on "two fresh notches on your hockey stick."
Global warming is apparently not a bipartisan research effort, but more of a Democratic National Committee sponsored science project which initially was given National coverage by Al Gore.

Mann isn't a fraud, his observation an have been confirmed and refined, and you and Steyn are cowards incapable of facing the universe as it is. The only difference is at least Steyn is man enough to put his name to his libel.

Steyn didn't assert that Mann is a fraud, but rather that Mann "tortured" the data. You may recall that Principal Component Analysis was used on a limited and secretly-adjusted data set to come up with the alarming "hockey stick" chart.

It's pretty much indisputable that there was significant warming from like 1930-1996, but very little since then in spite of more or less linear increases in CO2 concentrations since like 1850. The anthropogenic component of global warming is poorly understood, and the appr

The anthropogenic component of global warming is poorly understood, and the appropriate interventions even less so. But diverting taxpayer dollars so wealthy people can get a Tesla as their third or fourth auto is probably suboptimal.

Steyn didn't assert that Mann is a fraud, but rather that Mann "tortured" the data.

The judge disagrees that there is a distinction. Since the dozens of temperature reconstructions using different methods and different proxies all come up with the same answer it will be difficult to understand how Mann's work could be considered wrong, let alone fraudulent.

you can decide for yourself whether this is "torture" or not

Probably you cannot. Probably the most you can do is concoct conspiracy theories based on code comments. Leaving aside the fact that this code was authored by someone completely unrelated to the Mann temperature reconstructions (but why let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory?), it may be worth noting that the code was used in a paper that calls tree rings proxies into question : Trees tell of past climates: but are they speaking less clearly today? [royalsocie...ishing.org]

So if you want to dismiss the results of the paper that used this code, then you are dismissing work critical of one of the proxies used in Mann's reconstruction.

Nope. This isn't about whether there are better methods. Dozens of other papers get the same hockey stick with different methods and different proxies. They would all argue that their methods are better. That is science, not law. At issue here are the allegations of fraud. Here is what the most recent judge has said:

A reasonable reader, both within and outside the scientific community, would understand that a scientist who molests or tortures his data is acting far outside the bounds of any acceptable scientific method. In context, it would not be unreasonable for a reader to interpret the comment, and the republication in National Review, as an allegation that Dr. Mann had committed scientific fraud, which Penn State University then covered up, just as some had accused the University of covering up the Sandusky scandal. For many of the reasons discussed in Judge Combs Greene’s July 19 orders, to state as a fact that a scientist dishonestly molests or tortures data to serve a political agenda would have a strong likelihood of damaging his reputation within his profession, which is the very essence of defamation.

Yes, but we already know that hockey stick graph was misleading. Mann left off the warming and cooling trend of the Medival warming trend, aka, the right side of the valley, to show a hockey stick, not an elongated U.

Steyn didn't assert that Mann is a fraud, but rather that Mann "tortured" the data. You may recall that Principal Component Analysis was used on a limited and secretly-adjusted data set to come up with the alarming "hockey stick" chart.

I'm not sure about "alarming" - perhaps you've let your fear get the better of you. A good description would be "accurate" since the modelling accurately reflected what happened to the climate in the years succeeding.

It's pretty much indisputable that there was significant warming from like 1930-1996, but very little since then in spite of more or less linear increases in CO2 concentrations since like 1850.

And if we do not artificially split the period 1930-2013 into 2 chunks for no reason, we can see a clear interdecadal signal from CO2 induced warming - as predicted by Fourier, Arrhenius etc. If we artificially selected a region, say 1980-1996, we can see a significant warming trend somewhat above the long term trend predicted by GCM models, and then if we selected the period 1996-2013 we can see a definite warming trend, somewhat below the long term trend predict by GCM models. The data is so clear that the climate scientists were able to reduce the uncertainty (per AR5) of long term predictions of CO2 forced warming.

The actual source code is this, from briffa_Sep98_d.pro http://wattsupwiththat.com/200 [wattsupwiththat.com]... [wattsupwiththat.com] - you can decide for yourself whether this is "torture" or not, and whether this particular debate should be squelched:
;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

Looks pretty innocuous. Perhaps you either (a) Posted the wrong section of the model (b) Misunderstood the meaning of the comment "Apply a very artificial correction for decline" per the quite embarrassing mistakes made by some conspiracy theorists with respect to the word "decline" used in the CRU emails.

The actual source code is this, from briffa_Sep98_d.pro http://wattsupwiththat.com/200... [wattsupwiththat.com] - you can decide for yourself whether this is "torture" or not, and whether this particular debate should be squelched:

I really must disagree here. You can't infer anything worthwhile about the data just by reading some snippets of source code. If the analysis is convoluted and you don't trust it then the only way to "decide for yourself" is to analyse it for yourself. A bellicose blog ("arrogant programmer" and similar terms appear) doesn't count for much. A few lines of code don't tell you what the raw data look like, if the processing is reasonable based on the data, or if anything is being hidden. In this case, for ins

On the one hand: That particular debate was the subject of a US senate inquisition lead by hostile senators from coal rich states. The national academies stepped in as arbitrator and reviewed the work, they agreed with Mann's methods but criticized some of his certainty levels, these minor criticisms were addressees in a subsequent "hockey stick" paper from Mann (circa 2005) that was published by the national academies in their own journal (Science).

On the other hand: Anthony Watts is a well known denier with strong links to the same anti-science lobby groups as Steyn, he has never published a single peer-reviewed article or paper. He simply ignores any and all contra-evidence to his claims because he knows that some people will believe him if he repeats the same bald assertions ad-nauseam.

more or less linear increases in CO2 concentrations since like 1850

I think you are using an unconventional definition of "liner", probably one invented by Watts. The facts are it took ~250yrs to pump 500 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, on current consumption trends it will take less than 50yrs to double it.

Mann isn't a fraud, his observation an have been confirmed and refined, and you and Steyn are cowards incapable of facing the universe as it is. The only difference is at least Steyn is man enough to put his name to his libel.

How is Steyn a "coward" when he is standing up in court, rather than fleeing?

How is Steyn a "coward" when he is standing up in court, rather than fleeing?

The cowardness being discussed is Steyn's inability to "face the universe as it is," i.e. accept that climate change is man made.One could argue that the denial of man made climate change is an extensive attempt to flee from the facts and their consequences.

But the climate deniers do seem to have gotten as thick as thieves in the past couple years.

Much thinner than they were a decade ago, IMO most of those that are left are trolls and astro-turfers who like to get in quick on AGW stories.

Mann has been character assassinated by "for hire" lobbyists, he has had numerous death threats and has appeared before several political inquisitions. The coal industries effort to discredit Mann and ruin his life is lead in congress by US senator Inhofe. It's about time Mann, Hansen, Schmidt, and others, fought back against political persecution and those who created the army of useful idiots intent on doing them physical harm. They should not have ignored the threat this long, I wish them the best of luck.

Er, no. One of the claims of the global warming faithful is that a "consensus" of scientists agree with it's dogma while those who disagree are branded as heretics, er, non-scientists. Looking with one's eyeballs to criticize Mann is a good way to lose funding or status in the politically correct academic community.

New Scientist did a story on the scientists who disagreed with the global warming consensus. There were about a dozen of them (and some of them have since gone with the consensus). They get a respectful hearing, when they do scientific work, present it at conferences and submit it for publication. Scientists do not normally look to the National Review for scientific critiques.

Most of the critics of global warming are not scientists. They were published prominently on the Wall Street Journal editorial page,

I'm sure there are "fair-minded thinkers" who don't believe in AGW - but Mark Steyn is NOT one of them.I don't really give a damn whether he believes in global warming or not but he smeared a scientist purely out of political spite.

A "fair-minded thinker" would have stuck to a scientific critique. Steyn is a polemicist by nature, has been sued before and should be aware that he was straying into deep waters.It's not a foregone conclusion that Steyn will lose, far from it, but it's telling that the National Review refuses to support him.

Steyn doesn't need to prove Mann was a fraud, he must prove he had a reasonable basis to think Mann was a fraud. Proving Mann was a fraud would be a slam dunk. If he can do neither, his wallet is in a world of hurt.

Actually, one of the most interesting effects of this trial is that Mann must comply with Steyn's discovery demands, to see whether indeed he "tortured" the data... Mann and others have still refused to disclose the details of their models, saying (astoundingly) that people just wanted to prove them wrong. Trying to prove a model wrong is the usual way of science... So whether you think this is "settled science" or not, you should welcome this open disclosure and wonder why it takes a court proceeding to achieve it.

As for the notion of "settled science", which presumably means you should stop questioning something - this is a very disturbing concept which in my opinion has no place at all on slashdot, of all one forums. slashdot is one place where people discuss new ways of looking at old ideas - experiments test Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, studies about whether cutting salt from your diet reduces hypertension, the value of dietary suppliements, and other bits of uncommon knowledge. Almost every interesting post here challenges some "settled" idea.

Trying to prove a model wrong is the usual way of science... So whether you think this is "settled science" or not, you should welcome this open disclosure and wonder why it takes a court proceeding to achieve it.

It's one thing to challenge "settled" science for the sake of creating new science. It's yet another to challenge it for political or ideological reasons. Steyn and his ilk indisputably fall into the latter category.

As for the notion of "settled science", which presumably means you should stop questioning something - this is a very disturbing concept which in my opinion has no place at all on slashdot, of all one forums. slashdot is one place where people discuss new ways of looking at old ideas - experiments test Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, studies about whether cutting salt from your diet reduces hypertension, the value of dietary suppliements, and other bits of uncommon knowledge. Almost every interesting post here challenges some "settled" idea.

All science can be questioned. That's the point! But to question something, you must present contrary evidence. AGW deniers haven't. Instead, they rely on conspiracy theories and ad hominem attacks.

It's hard to present contrary evidence if you can't get at and question the models or data.

Those who can't perform a simple Google search would be hard pressed to debate the science in any meaningful way (and should probably cease spewing BS to score political points). I found the code and data with a two minute search. - http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holoc... [psu.edu]

If Steyn's motive was scientific inquiry and he was conducting the discourse in refereed journals I would agree with you.

That's not it though. He has no science background and he's into politically motivated demagoguery, court actions and making a public circus of it. His attacks of the judge in the case got his defense team to quit.

Pfff. Your Nobel link consists of one blogger linking to himself and another AGW critic. . The original blogger has a problem with reading comprehension. Al Gore and the IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. As a member of the IPCC and having contributed important work for the IPCC, Mann is correct in asserting that he and his colleagues were awarded the prize. They were not individually named as their collective work was recognized as an organization and not individually.

Conspiracy narratives are always the fallback of the deniers. I gave you the code and the data and you still want to claim that "Mann has a record of being evasive about the data and methods used." Let's not let the facts get in the way of a good yarn.

That isn't conspiracy, it is a record of interaction, and Dr. Mann was evasive and nonresponsive as the record shows. Anything you can point to now doesn't change the history, and that is assuming that what you have pointed to is relevant. As the first link shows Mann repeatedly refused to cooperate in making his data properly available for inspection.

He is debating Steyn in court about whether he is a fraud. If Steyn can just prove he is a fraud, he wins, if not, he is in a lot of trouble.

It's part of a concerted effort to end free speech of anyone that wants to question the AGW alarmists. It includes Reddit's decision to ban comments on climate change, targeting not just libellous or hateful stuff, but “outspoken opinions”, “potentially controversial” views, and “contrarianism”. In short, critical or eccentric thinking, stuff that doesn’t fit with what the overlords of Reddit consider to be politically proper.

Yes, let's push the hell out of renewables, as the Germans are doing. Then, with wind turbines twirling away on every hilltop and coastline, what do you propose for the other 80% of our power needs? Germany is going back to coal as a supplement, but in the Mann-is-right scenario we're discussing here, no fossil fuel is an option.

Meanwhile, have some freshly-sliced bald eagle straight from the windfield. I guarantee, no GMOs.

Wait, are you telling me that people who believe in global warming aren't just trying to profit from global disaster?

You mean we're not all going to get a big check thanks to global warming? I'm shocked. I keep hearing how climate scientists are doing their research because of the billions of dollars that can be made from bad news. All those filthy rich earth scientists and their profiteering.

Let's not forget, one of Mark Steyn's best friends is the great humanitarian Conrad Black, who was sent to prison because he was so altruistic and decent. Steyn still uses about every fifth column he writes to advocate for the full pardon of Conrad Black (and probably a Nobel Prize for him, too).

We were talking about climate scientists, like Michael Mann. Now maybe you can enlighten us as to how Al Gore is spreading that wealth that dwarfs that of the major energy industry corporations to all the struggling climate scientists who work in his employ?

The money from Al Gore's AGW stuff is pumped straight back into a trust fund that uses it to produce more AGW stuff, he does not personally profit from the trust and has testified to those accounting facts in numerous senate hearings. The coal state senators who organise and run those senate inquisitions have a lot to gain if they could prove he was lying to the senate (and by inference the tax department). With all the coercive powers of such senate hearings they are unable to find any evidence he is lying

Black was found guilty of diverting funds for personal benefit from money due (to) Hollinger International, and of other irregularities. The embezzlement occurred when the company sold certain publishing assets. For example, in 2000, in an arrangement that came to be known as the "Lerner Exchange," Black personally acquired Chicago's Lerner Newspapers and sold it to Hollinger.[42] He also was found guilty of obstruct

Sure would hate to see "Global Warming" get slapped down by the courts now wouldn't we?

I think we'd all breathe a sigh of relief if the courts could rationally and scientifically strike down the phenomenon of global warming, or its source in man-made activities.

This.

For the benefit of those without sarcasm-detectors, it's worth emphasizing that it's the job of science, not the courts (or the media) to "rationally and scientifically" prove or disprove scientific phenomena.

For the benefit of those without sarcasm-detectors, it's worth emphasizing that it's the job of science, not the courts (or the media) to "rationally and scientifically" prove or disprove scientific phenomena.

To be sure however, the case of Kitzmiller vs the Dover Area School district, a judge determined what was or was not science. And the verdict came in, ID is not science. It was just a pseudoscience effort to put creationism into classrooms as science.

What I find a little unsettling is that both Creationism, ID and anti-AGW folks tend to use the same weapons. Cherry picking data, using old data, and one of their favorites, character assassination. Like comparing a respected scientist to a serial child molester.

And this passes for refuting AGW? That Mark Steyn believes that Mann is the same thing as a child molester? Using arguments like that just underscores the weakness of his position. And his web page is saying that Mann vs Steyn is the Scopes Monkey trial of the 21st century. Umm, sensationalizing much?

We see so much of this, where scientists are "refuted" by political operatives. Of course, being political operatives, they operate on a field in which they can, the mentioned cherry picking,, the character assassination, etc.

And yet, the answer is so simple. Reputable scientists hould be turning up research that shows that the amount of so called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is not causing any warming effect, and why a proven scientific principle is wrong. note: CO2 levels causing heat retention has been proven in grade school science fairs over and over and over.

And they need to do it outside of journals that have direct relationship to industries that stand to profit by refutation. And not cherry pick peers. And not have editors that are proponents of water dowsing, or work for petroleum institutes. Because that's about all there is so far.

The "hockey stick" agrees closely with the average of IPCC models. Yet none of the models comes close to matching real measurements [drroyspencer.com]. Perhapsthe hockey stick only stands the test of time when compared against other models, not real data...

I wonder where the good Dr got his data from? Oh there it is! Turns out that he selectively chose 2 datasets for mid tropospheric temperatures in the tropics and then compared the data from those to GCM predictions for the whole surface (including polar regions) and for across the entire column.

Whoops.

He admits in the comments below after this is exposed that in fact the polar regions are expected to warm faster than the tropics (hard not to, since we've observed it) and thus, temperature rises in the polar regions will be higher then the projections of the models, but handwaves this away. No, Roy, this is what maths is for. Don't handwave.

Yet we are still in a global temperature stall - and not a single model comes close to predicting it. The best worldwide dataset we have (the satellite data that Dr. Spencer uses) doesn't show the heating (where modern climate theory says it should happen the strongest - mid-troposphere). No data confirms the models. So which do you believe? Data or models?

One of the key features of the Climate Change National Forum is the comment section. Below each entry, and above the general comment section, will be comments made by other contributors. Rather than presenting a unified face to the outside world, contributors are encouraged to question, debate, dispute, expand, and otherwise discuss other contributions. The public rarely gets to see scientists debating each other, outside of the fake debates that are

Don't be ridiculous. Government funded scientists have lots of proper scientific discussions. Practically all of CERN is government funded by various governments, just to pick an example off the top of my head.

Yep, nobody has ever discussed science at the Manhatten Project, or at NASA, or at DARPA or the NIH or the CDC or any of those government funded radio telescopes or the astronomers who work on them, or at any of the millions of government funded universities and laboratories around the world.

No, my friend, I think you will find that almost ALL scientific discussion happens where government funding is involved... it's the corporate-funded ones you should distrust, they are the ones who get paid to hide annoy

Isn't realclimate.org just his advocacy site? I've had people point to it before. It's reads like a marketing hype rather than as a scientific discussion.

Are you looking at the same link I am? Other than using the "Myth #1" style of summarization used by many people (including marketing) if I have a criticism of realclimate.org it's that they write too much like scientists. Their writing is full of caveats, asides, and long winded explainations because the subject is inherently messy. Frankly I think their writing is just too dry and analytical to reach a general audience. Just look at this excerpt from the link in question:

MYTH #4: Errors in the "Hockey Stick" undermine the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric warmth is anomalous.

[...]

The second falsehood holds that there are errors in the Mann et al (1998, 1999) analyses, and that these putative errors compromise the “hockey stick” shape of hemispheric surface temperature reconstructions. Such claims seem to be based in part on the misunderstanding or misrepresentation by some individuals of a corrigendum that was published by Mann and colleagues in Nature. This corrigendum simply corrected the descriptions of supplementary information that accompanied the Mann et al article detailing precisely what data were used. As clearly stated in the corrigendum, these corrections have no influence at all on the actual analysis or any of the results shown in Mann et al (1998). Claims that the corrigendum reflects any errors at all in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction are entirely false.

Realclimate.org isn't marketing, it's dry scientific writing directed to laypeople, what the AGW community needs is an advocacy site written by non-scientists which is less concerned about the science and more concerned about the debate. Realclimate.org fills an essential niche in the debate but it's not the kind of hand wavy tabloidish mass audience style of blog that's needed to counter Watts Up With That?.

You talk about a scientist as if he were a literary character. Moving from accuracy to advocacy is not as simple as switching hats. It's more like switching careers. It takes the same personal toll. It's a very heavy context switch. Very few people manage it and usually the ones who do are the ones who dedicate themselves to being polymaths -- conditioning their minds to constant switching of contexts. They are the ones who are defined by their ability to switch contexts. To suggest that someone can

Fraud has a legal definition, and so does libel. Mann's research has been found to be scientifically accurate and no allegations of fraud have been found worthy of recognition in the academic community. Steyn's writing is purely political, and his assertions of fraud against Mann, being without merit, clearly show that the author's intent is to discredit Mann's presentation. Steyn clearly went beyond reason when he impuned Mann's character by comparing Mann's character to that of a sociopathic child abuser. My hope is that that Steyn and the National Review, it's editorial staff and publisher are all found guilty and whipped within an inch of their dubious credility using the pulpit of the court. They should be bludgeoned with its gavel for the failure to afford their readers a reasonable opinion or the benefit of moderating their overzealous attackdog, and they should be fined within the limits of the law so as to hold their action up in the light of its own outrageousness.

William F. Buckely went to his grave lamenting the current state of Conservatism and its discourse.

Mann's research has been found to be scientifically accurate by an investigative team appointed by the same University President who could not be bothered to investigate allegations of child molestation against Sandusky, a University President who had a vested interest in Mann's research being found to be scientifically accurate to the tune of several million dollars in research grants.

What is missing is the proxy data from post 1980. Mann used proxy data for temperatures up until 1980, at which point he switched to using thermometer readings. He has, as far as I have been able to locate, never released the data that would allow a comparison of his proxy data to thermometer readings (that is, what the proxy readings would have shown since 1980). My recollection is that you are mistaken and Mann has never released his raw data, but I was unable to confirm or deny that understanding in the

While I don't expect you to really be bothered by such things as facts, you might be surprised to learn that the University of Pennsylvania is different and distinct from Pennsylvania State University, the university where Jerry Sandusky committed his crimes.

Actually, it was Pennsylvania State University that found Mann's research to be scientifically accurate, not the University of Pennsylvania (although you were correct that it was the University where he teaches and that receives income from the funding of his climate research. The interesting thing is that the person who put together the group to investigate him was the President of Pennsylvania State University, the same President who put together the group which initially "investigated" the allegations of

Scientific concern about climate change isn't, of course, a religion. However, there are an awful lot of True Believers who act as though it were. And no, I'm not a member of the Heartland Institute, I'm just a skeptic who accepts the fact that the climate is changing (It's always changing, sometimes getting warmer, sometimes cooler.) but doubts that the main driving force at the presence is anthropogenic because I don't, personally, find the evidence sufficiently persuasive and prefer to think for myself

There aren't that many scientists in any particular field. There are only small communities of people with personal, hands-on, in-depth work on the raw data indicating that the Cosmic Microwave Background exists, or that atoms have nuclei made of protons and neutrons, or that portions of general relativity hold up in the lab. All scientists "piling on" to every single aspect of modern science are "just laymen" with regard to the bulk of human knowledge outside a very specific sub-field that they personally

You can verify climate science claims to the same high-school/college level that you verified all other branches of physics. You can demonstrate, e.g., the greenhouse effect, and the spectral transmission characteristics of carbon dioxide, with simple equipment. You can check that burning carbohydrates releases H20 and C02. You can build simple toy-model radiative transfer models that show trapping more heat in a system (via greenhouse gas) increases the temperature. I doubt you did significantly more "conclusive" tests of gravity, particle physics, or quantum mechanics in high school or college --- you were just willing to trust that extending the same procedure that predicted the simple toy model results also works in the "damn, that's too hard to do in my garage" systems.

You probably haven't personally worked on squeezed light states or quantum entanglement or production of exotic particles in TeV-scale supercollider experiments; do you assume the scientists doing these are frauds pulling the wool over your eyes? Yes, the finest details of global climate modeling are too messy for high school students to pin down; but the science does make sense on the crude level accessible to college-level experiment. Data sets and models are available and shared between qualified researchers --- but, just like raw data from the LHC, they're not always easy for an "outsider" without extensive subject-specific training to evaluate. So, why do you assume that somewhere along the way (at the levels too complex for an Excel spreadsheet) the system suddenly turns fraudulent? Just because paid industry shills have told you so?

No, but there are plenty of instances of entire fields getting it wrong for decades at a time.

Can you cite examples of fields getting it wrong on large scale details accessible to contemporary levels of experimental evidence? The "big revolutions" in science have always been about the tiny details. Einstein didn't radically overthrow Newton; his theory indicated only microscopically tiny deviations from classical physics that could barely be measured by the most sensitive apparatus (and they were, and the rest is history). Quantum mechanics didn't destroy classical physics; it only showed strange things happening at the most sensitive boundaries of technology. Fundamental shifts in understanding --- things that shift the foundational basis for entire fields --- occur at the extreme margins of experimental evidence; it's never "the old guys are 90% wrong," but rather "the old guys are 99.9% right, but we've just found that 0.1% discrepancy."

Scientists in any field don't get famous by showing that the "scientific consensus" is erroneous, they get their grants turned down and their papers rejected.

Really? You just stated that drastic changes in scientific understanding have occurred before. Who built renown and careers off those? The guys who stuck with the old, discredited theories? Being the revolutionary discoverer of new physics overthrowing old theory has always been the way to get maximal renown --- you just need to be able to back up your stuff with solid evidence. Anthropogenic climate change deniers aren't discredited because they oppose consensus views; they're marginalized because they have zero solid evidence and rely on sloppy, unscientific, long-ago-disproven rhetoric instead of intellectual rigor.

The chance of field-wide error persisting for decades and remaining unchallenged, however, is very high, in particular given that "there aren't many climate scientists" and the statistics, computations, and models are highly complex and interdisciplinary.

That's why climate scientists report very broad confidence intervals. They can't tell you the weather five years from now in Minneapolis, or even precisely where between 1.1 degrees and 6.4 degrees average warming will be over the next century (depending hugely also on emissions levels). IPCC warming estimates fall in a large uncertainty band, estimated by best practices to cover the complexity in fine details of figuring out exactly how a strongly-coupled complex system is going to evolve. On the other hand, climate change denialism --- that there is no effect within the broad range of uncertainty cited by climate experts --- is based on nothing but anti-scientific corporate shill craziness. There is zero scientific evidence that a guess at where the climate is heading falls in the "no change produced by anthropogenic emissions" regime, though there is room for uncertainty in the band between moderate and extreme climate impacts.

To the extent that there is field wide error, such errors (based on historical precedent) are likely to be in the small details rather than the "big picture." Also, such errors are, a-priori, no less likely to over-predict anthropogenic impacts than to under-predict them, so the hard-line "there's nothing to worry about" stance is simply politically-motivated intentional ignorance (the antithesis of a scientific "skeptical" approach).

What fields have you applied for grants in? I'm not in climate science, but at least I particle physics, I can assure you that "everyone already knows this, and we're going to get the same results" is not a winning grant proposal or path to career success. If you want funding, you find an issue with lots of uncertainty (or one where you know you can do better than everyone else), and highlight how different your approach will be, with the possibility of finding new results. Trying to upset the consensus is the entire name of the game --- the only limit to doing so is demonstrating that you're competent to do so. Every scientist I know loves the principles of "underdog" experiments, using crazy new ideas that just might work to make new discoveries --- indeed, replication of results in many fields suffers because nobody is interested in just "confirming the consensus." There is no shame in the scientific community (at least the portion I've seen) about challenging the consensus with boundary-pushing work (negative results on well-performed experiments contribute to career success) --- you just have to be competent, rather than a nutjob spouting ignorance (the typical state of climate-change-denying "experts").

No, I didn't agree with you: people don't wire grant proposals to confirm consensus, they write grant proposals to challenge or disprove it. If you assume consensus is unchallengeable and true, then you have nothing to write a grant proposal on. Only if you find something new --- that previous researchers overlooked, or got wrong, or didn't have the tools to measure --- are you going to get research funding. "Confirm" and "test or challenge" are not the same things. You're saying that people can only get funding to do experiments that look for and find the same answers everyone got before ("the consensus"), which is simply false. People get funding to do things that might produce new results that change previous understanding ("test or challenge").

Actually, those in academia who question global warming come under intense pressure: no funding, threats of firing, denial of tenure, social ostracism. Anyone who looked like he was about to come up with proof that global warming was a fraud would receive death threats: the population of college students contains a substantial number of people with no compunction against violence.

Much existing funding for climatologists comes from organizations that have a vested interest in demonstrating global warming, pa

Unless you have personally done the research, you also have a cognitive bias to accept one of the largest bodies of modern scientific research. It's only a matter of which side you believe, in the end.

Both sides act like drunken schoolyard bullies beating up the smaller kids for their lunch money.

Well, regardless of whether the climate is changing or whether humans have anything to do with it, consider CO2 and the acidifying oceans because of it. Man pumped up the extra CO2 over a very short time frame, short enough where species will have a hell of a time coping. Don't forget that one of the bases of the food chain is the ocean.

Acidifying oceans as a result of man-pumped CO2 in a short time frame is enough reason to stop it.

Indeed. And, as I've written here before, you don't have to buy into AGW, or whatever they're calling it today, to think that pouring endless amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere to see what happens is a bad idea. I grew up in Los Angeles, and I can remember what the air there was like before we started putting in all of the pollution controls. I'd like to see some of the other developed/developing nations start doing something about their air quality

If you think you know so much about the issue, then why do you pick and choose your sources of information?

Of course, that's nothing more than a straw-man argument, and can be ignored. I do my best to stay informed on the subject, but I don't like (among other things) the way that the AGW people have done everything they possibly could to deny that the Medieval Warm or the Little Ice Age happened or that they were anything except "local phenomena." I also have a friend who requested the raw data from t

>the way that the AGW people have done everything they possibly could to deny that the Medieval Warm or the Little Ice Age happened or that they were anything except "local phenomena."

And there you went and proved your opponents point about observation bias. In fact, the medieval warming period is well known in climate science circles - and was discovered BY them.I was once in a debate about climate change where a denier tried to use the medieval period to prove that climate science is a fake and Michael Mann is a fraud - to prove his point he linked me to a scientific paper about the medieval warming period... and proved he hadn't actually READ the paper because if he had opened it he would have seen, right on the front page, that the lead author was Michael Mann - the very scientist he was trying to discredit by bringing it up wrote most of the research we have on it !The medieval warming period doesn't discredit modern climate science - that we know about it at all is a PRODUCT of modern climate science !

Well, religion or not, one thing it should do is reinforce the principle that you should be careful what you say about people, even online, and regardless of whether you are a journalist. In most cases the libel laws are no different for Joe Shmoe than they are or a syndicated columnist.

Generally, opinions are fine... as long as they're clearly opinion and not stated as fact. Because even "You're an asshole" is commonly accepted as an opinion, that's probably okay... especially if you make it clear that it's only opinion.

But "fraud", and other such claims? Usually over the line, unless you can show that it's true.

I'm not sure that's true. There are three factors. Of which I am aware, that is... IANAL. And of course I'm talking about U.S. Libel laws are different in UK.

[1] The statement must be of a defamatory nature (likely to cause others to have a lower opinion of the subject or otherwise damaging, as to professional reputation for example). [2] It must be untrue, and [3] the person stating it must know, or reasonably should know, that it is not true.

I could be wrong, but I don't think intent per se is a requirement. For example, someone could write something damaging about someone else, genuinely believing it to be true, but if they reasonably should have known it was not true, then they can still be guilty of libel. So it's possible to run afoul of the law without intending to tell lies about somebody.

We look forward to your publication of the flaws you have discovered in Dr. Mann's math. Ah, but you can't publish them, because you're just making this stuff up. Or is it because every single reviewer for every scientific journal is a member of a deep conspiracy to undermine the fossil fuel industry because... well if you have to ask you don't understand how these dark conspiracies work!

You don't need to read a book to find that out. He did contribute to the winning of a Nobel peace prize. He received a certificate from the IPCC thanking him for his contributions. Various people, desperate people, thought this certificate was the Nobel peace prize, they never asked him, he never claimed it was. They made up a story about him faking the certificate - he didn't fake it, it was real. Much embarrassment was heaped upon Anthony Watts, and other worthies, including our favourite Lord-who-is-not-a-Lord Monkton, for these spurious and quickly debunked claims.

He never made any claim to have been a Nobel Laureate. He did win a Nobel peace prize, as one of many who shared the prize. He never claimed anything that was false, this was a rumour made up by a number of people who apparently can't read or otherwise lack basic comprehension skills.

Mann referred to himself as a Nobel prize recipient - which the IPCC has stated he's not allowed to do. Why are you posting obvious falsehoods in his defence throughout this thread?

Dr. Mann is a climate scientist whose research has focused on global warming. In 2007, along with Vice President Al Gore and his colleagues of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Mann modified the technique to ensure that graphical analysis would suppress any variation in the bulk of the graph, while driving the final data high - a hockey-stick, in other words. Jolliffe could see no other reason for introducing this modification beyond producing hockey-stick output.